February 17, 2008
Sunday

It doesn’t matter how many times you say the word, it never sounds like a word you want to say.
                         —Eve Ensler, b. 1953
                            American playwright

The word Eve Ensler is referring to above is “vagina,” and the line comes from the opening of her iconic and controversial play, The Vagina Monologues. Originally a performance piece intended to celebrate women’s sexuality, it has become the centerpiece of V-Day, a movement to stop violence, particularly sexual violence, against women.

The Vagina Monologues has many words that people don’t want to say. One of them was uttered by Jane Fonda on The Today Show last Thursday. Fonda is appearing in a production of the play celebrating V-Day’s tenth anniversary. Meredith Viera asked her about her initial reluctance to take part. “I was asked to do a monologue called ‘Cunt,'” Fonda answered, “and I said, ‘I don’t think so, I’ve got enough problems.’ Then I came to New York to see Eve and it changed my life.”

The Today Show is broadcast live in the Eastern time zone and, because it is part of the network’s news division, is not subject to a delay so that problematic material can be cut or altered. After the segment in which Fonda and Ensler appeared, Viera issued an apology on behalf of the network and Fonda for the “slip” that resulted in the use of the word. “We would do nothing to offend the audience,” Viera said. In subsequent airings of the segment in feeds for the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones, Fonda’s face was replaced with a still photo and the word was not heard.

I have seen the play, more than once. I’ve laughed, been moved, been motivated to examine my own history of sexual awakening and sexual experience. I’ve read critical analyses of the play and been given food for thought about the ways in which it might be promoting some negative stereotypes and biases while seeking to change others.

I did not see The Today Show segment in its entirety, only clips of the relevant utterance. The incident came to my attention from a mention on one of the discussion lists that I read. The list member who brought up the matter is an editor, thus someone attuned to words and their nuances, but he is also a former career military man about five years older than I am, and thus someone who historically is not a fan of Jane Fonda. A different list member who provided the link to the video clip labeled it “not for delicate ears.”

Those would, indeed, be delicate ears that could not withstand a single utterance of the word in a fairly benign context. Fonda was not using it as an insult and was not referring to her genitalia nor to anyone else’s. She was merely giving the title of one section of the play. In looking for the clip and discussion of it, I fell into commentary on it that quickly devolved into a discussion of Fonda herself rather than of the word, most of it fostered by people who remain angry with her for her perceived unpatriotic (unto treasonous) actions during the Vietnam War, actions which she has said she regrets and which she insists were misrepresented.

It seems to me that a lot of people get offended by words and put their energies into condemning both the utterances and the utterer while ignoring the serious issues that gave rise to the utterances in the first place. When Janet Jackson had her “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl in 2004, the hue and cry was over bad behavior by various members of the Jackson family and a fleeting glimpse of a body part. What bothered me is that the action that caused Jackson’s breast to be exposed appeared to be a simulated assault. It was in the context of a “song” (we shall use the term broadly here) in which the speaker expresses a wish to have physical relations with the individual he is addressing. “Dance with me” is apparently used as a euphemism for “have sex with me.” He tries to counteract the subject’s reluctance by suggesting that her “no” actually means “yes.” (“Don’t be so quick to walk away .  .  .You don’t have to admit you wanna play.”) Finally, he declares “gotta have you naked by the end of the song” and rips off her clothes. (My academic training means I can talk about almost anything in standard lit-crit terms.)

But the brouhaha was not over the fact that a performance piece considered entertainment at a football halftime show seemed to glorify assault, but over the exposure of nearly the whole of Jackson’s breast, including the nipple and areola. Worse, to my way of thinking, many news stories and commentators used the term “boob.” I found that really demeaning and tiring. And I wondered, if a man’s penis had been exposed in this way, would slang terms for it have been used in supposedly serious print pieces about the incident?

On Thursday evening, some ten hours after the Fonda follies, I found myself on the campus of my alma mater, Millersville University, to attend a double header basketball game (both the women’s and the men’s teams). As is my usual habit, I picked up a copy of The Snapper, the school’s student-run newspaper. Like many college campuses, Millersville had its own V-Day program. The newspaper ran a review of the performance of The Vagina Monologues. The article devoted two paragraphs to the energy created by “Cunt,” energy which got the audience to stand and try to cheer away the word’s taboo status. More space, however, was devoted to “Say It,” a monologue that calls attention to the atrocities perpetrated on “comfort girls,” young Asian women forced into sexual slavery in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II. I applauded the sensibility that choice indicated.

Millersville is in a fairly conservative area of Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, it seems that The Snapper has a history of not shrinking from the use of frank but problematic terms. I was in the audience on November 11, 1968 when civil rights activist Julian Bond gave a speech in which he compared the U.S. presence in Vietnam to rape. “Would the victim like gradual deescalation or complete withdrawal?” he asked. The Snapper accurately reported that portion of his remarks. The Lancaster city newspaper, as I recall, wrote around it. 

My feminist consciousness is more heightened, and more militant, now than it was when I was 21, and I would now caution Mr. Bond (whom I still revere) about using the word “rape” to refer to any act other than forced sexual intercourse. But I am happy to see that the campus community which my daughter now inhabits does not shrink from forthright presentation of these important issues, and does not mince words about it.

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